when you're dreaming with a broken heart
by eponnia
Summary: AU. Finnick survives. Annie doesn't. [Filmverse Odesta one-shot]


**AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is vaguely inspired by** _ **like the blue in gold**_ **by starlightmoonprincess.**

 **The title is from "Dreaming With A Broken Heart" by John Mayer, and the song mentioned in the fic, "Sing A Song of Seashells", is a real nursery rhyme, with lyrics altered from "Sing A Song of Sixpence".**

* * *

 _Wondering was she really here?_

 _Is she standing in my room?_

 _No, she's not_

 _'Cause she's gone_

 _Gone, gone, gone, gone_

* * *

Finnick stares, wide-eyed, at his impossibly small son cradled carefully in his arms.

The minutes-old infant's skin is still red and wrinkled from the delivery, wispy hair – which Finnick can't yet tell if it is his bronze or Annie's red – on the top of their son's head. He starts to quiet in his father's gentle hold, his squalling lowering to a whimper. As Finnick, wondering if his face would split in two from his grin, looks up at his wife, he sees Annie's eyes roll back.

His smile fades as a Capitol nurse says, "Doctor, the bleeding isn't stopping."

Finnick's heart starts pounding as he stands frozen, staring at an alarmingly pale Annie's unconscious form, her red hair plastered with sweat to the back of her neck.

"Mr. Odair, we need to perform emergency surgery."

He can't move.

"We need you to leave."

He finally looks at whoever is talking, and sees the Capitol midwife giving him a carefully blank but determined look. How can she be so calm when Annie could be _dying_?

Fear, like nothing he has ever felt before, starts pounding like ice through his veins as the Capitol doctor and nurses flurry around his wife.

"I'm not leaving."

"You can take your son and go to the waiting room. We'll update you on her condition."

"I'm not _abandoning_ my wife-"

"We need to operate."

Finnick can't breathe as he watches the hospital staff prep Annie for surgery, and the nurses are starting to give him the occasional look as they scurry to obey the orders of the doctor.

The midwife puts a hand on Finnick's elbow. "I'm sorry, Mr. Odair, but you have to leave. Hospital protocol."

He finally obeys as his son starts crying. Taking one last look at a motionless Annie, her wedding ring still glinting on her finger, he follows the midwife.

The support crowd of friends and pseudo family – neither Finnick or Annie have any blood relatives left – immediately offers congratulations as he walks through the doors, holding his son to his chest. But they quiet when they register Finnick's expression; he feels as if the doctor has cut him open and pulled out everything in his chest. He feels hollow, empty, _aching_.

"We'll do all we can," the midwife says seriously. "She's a Victor, after all."

Finnick wants to say that Annie is not just a Victor, she is a _wife_ , a _mother_ , a _person_ , but the midwife leaves and he doesn't have the energy to protest.

He realizes dimly that everyone is waiting for him to explain, and he draws a shaky breath through his nose. "She's…" His throat constricts. "The bleeding wouldn't stop, and…" He trails off, thoughts fragmented.

"Sit down, Odair," Haymitch says gruffly.

Finnick obeys, taking a seat beside Katniss. Peeta is to her left, Johanna and Haymitch further down the row of chairs. He is just grateful there's no one else in the waiting room – no fawning photographers, no screaming fans, no adoring interviewers. Just broken Victors and damaged friends making up a dysfunctional family of misfits.

"What's the sex?" Johanna asks bluntly.

"Boy," he answers, suddenly wanting to leave all this behind. He's only twenty-five, but he's sure, after everything, his body and mind can't take this kind of stress anymore. But he has to bear it, because his son needs him. _Annie_ needs him.

A lump forms in his throat as Katniss quietly asks, "What are you going to call him?"

It takes Finnick a moment to answer. "We hadn't decided, really. I wanted to call him Reef, but Annie-" His voice cracks ever so slightly. "Annie wanted to name him Wade."

"They're both good names," Peeta offers. "Whichever one you pick."

Finnick doesn't respond.

No one offers to hold the nameless infant, and Finnick is grateful not to have to give away his only reminder of his wife. He refuses to let himself go numb, like he did when he was in a Capitolite's bed or after one of his tributes died in the Arena. He knows, whatever happens, he has to always be present for his child. It's what Annie would – _does_ \- want him to do, and it's what their son deserves.

* * *

They sit in the waiting room for three more hours.

Finnick doesn't know if he wants the doors to open or not, but finally the doctor walks through them straight to him.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Odair, but your wife did not make it."

The doctor is saying something that vaguely sounds like _we did everything we could_ and his pseudo family is murmuring _I'm so sorry_ but blood is pounding in his ears and his hands are shaking. The only thing that keeps him from collapsing is his son – _Wade Odair, not Reef, never Reef_ – wailing, the three-hour-old motherless infant's cries piercing through the fog that has enveloped his father.

* * *

The funeral is small.

They don't lay her to rest in any fancy Capitol cemetery, but in a traditional service in Four. The casket is wrapped in a net and lowered into a deep grave on a dune overlooking the sea; two small glass vials, one containing salt water and one holding sand, have been placed with Annie in her driftwood coffin. Finnick lines the seashells - ones he had combed the beach for that very morning with Wade sleeping in a sling at his chest - on top of her gravestone.

 _Anemone Delta Odair née Cresta_ , the marker reads. _Beloved wife. Cherished mother._

Finnick forbids any mention of the Games on Annie's tombstone.

* * *

That night, his first back in Four's Victor's Village, Finnick dreams of the Capitol.

 _He is at a party and hundreds of shrieking men and women are trying to reach out and touch him. But then, one scream, terrified rather than enthusiastic, rises above the rest, and he sees Annie being dragged away by her hair by Capitolites towards an open door revealing a bed. Finnick immediately fights through the crowd harder than he had even done in his Games, than against the Mutts during the Second Rebellion, but the crowd never seems to end. Annie is sobbing and he can't reach her and he curses Snow because Finnick had promised to do anything the president and the Capitol wanted if only they left Annie alone._

 _And then his dream changes, and he sees her in the Capitol hospital room, covered in blood as faceless Capitol nurses surround her. The doctor suddenly transforms into Snow, and the president rips Wade from the Victor's hands as Annie begs Finnick to mentor her and their son in the Seventy-Sixth Games._

Then Finnick hears a different wail and jolts awake, heart pounding and body covered in sweat, as he looks wildly in the darkness for Annie. But she is not by his side, and he can't rescue her from anything now.

He realizes Wade is crying.

Finnick scrambles up from the wood floor - his usual sleeping place for years now, because he has spent too much of his twenty-five years in beds - and stumbles over to the wall to find a lights switch. Once the living room is lit, he goes to Wade's bassinet. He lifts his days-old son into his arms and takes him to the kitchen, forcing his brain to focus as he warms up the formula and tests the temperature on his wrist like everyone told him. Wade drinks some of the formula, but continues to fuss even after Finnick changes him into a fresh napkin, so Finnick opens a window and they listen to the ocean, the barest hint of dawn in the dark sky.

Wade is still whimpering, however, and Finnick hoarsely sings an old Four lullaby.

 _"Sing a song of seashells,_

 _There's clams and oysters, too._

 _Some of them are shiny,_

 _Some are white and blue._

 _"When you pick a shell up,_

 _Hold it to your ear._

 _If you're very quiet,_

 _What do you think you'll hear?"_

When he finishes, he looks down to see Wade's eyes fluttering closed. Leaving the window open, Finnick exits the kitchen to carefully sit down on the couch, but the infant wakes at the movement and starts to cry again. Finnick sings the lullaby once more, and finally his son quiets. As Wade drifts off, Finnick thinks of Annie, and is lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves crashing on the beach.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE: The thing about Finnick sleeping on the floor instead of in a bed is borrowed from** _ **Exit Light, Enter Night**_ **by grumkin_snark. I think that is something Finnick would probably very willing do in response to his visits to the Capitol, as if there wasn't enough about Finnick's life to make you want to cry.**


End file.
